Saturday, May 16, 2009

"The Haunting Hand"

P Powrie - before 1955

It is all very well to say "Never let your right hand know what your left hand is doing" but when it gets the other way around and your left hand simply doesn't know what your right hand is going to do next - and nor do you for that matter, and your right hand is haunting you - its a bit disconcerting, to say the least!

What actually happened was this - and I'll say right now that I don't expect you to believe me, nobody would, except those who saw and felt the things, that is, my mother, my future wife Jo, the maid Nora and myself. Well, as I was saying, what actually happened was this...

Through a very unfortunate motor car accident about eight years ago, when I was in my very youthful and irresponsible 'teens', I had to have my right hand amputated at the wrist. Yes, just a nice clean cut and an artificial hand in its place. And because it was made of plastic, and flesh-coloured and because I had developed the knack of using that hand only with some job for which it was very well fitted, and otherwise making it look somehow too busy to be useless, people often did not realise that it was artificial. A nice wide leather strap with a watch on it, thus also subtly implying that I was left-handed, helped neatly with the deception.

However, all this is almost 'by the way'. My real hand, over which, at the time, I had become very sentimental, I had decently buried in the place which later, I firmly believed, was to be the burial ground of my own ashes. Yes, I was to be cremated, but my hand, no, I couldn't bear even the thought of it, so it was interred to keep the final resting place for my ashes 'warm' for me, so to speak.

All went well - for my real hand that is, and so indirectly for me, until about eighteen months ago, then things seemed to get a bit out of hand, as you might say. For the first time I seriously contemplated going overseas. Now believe me, I had travelled all over the Country, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and even to the "Falls", all these places had had the pleasure of my presence at some time or other, but never before had I left the shores of South Africa, except just to go up the coast to Durban and my hand - the real one that is - which by this time must have been feeling a bit neglected, as for quite long periods I forgot it had ever existed, took exception to my proposed travels and decided to do something about it. (At least, this is what I presume.)

So, as always happens when one has lived in the same home for many years, grows up there in fact, things accumulate - things like old toys, my half hearted collection of stamps, and old and slightly dilapidated pair of dark glasses (of which more later) a rubber snake (What fun I had with this at school.) and so on. As I was saying, things accumulate and these did - in an old cupboard, all jumbled up, the pair of dark glasses aslant on the teddy-bear's nose. Therefore, this cupboard along with the rest of the house, must be cleared up, as, owing to the acute housing shortage, which had persisted for some years and due to the fact that my Mother was coming with me and Jo, too, I firmly decided that the house must be let while we were away.

Well, the plans were laid and the clearing started, when the queer things began happening, 'though it wasn't until I had reached the old toy cupboard to be sure.

We were all there. Mother and Nora in the kitchen adjoining the lobby where the cupboard stood, Mother sorting and listing crockery and cutlery etc, Nora preparing the Sunday lunch, when Jo and I advanced upon the cupboard in question - I quite determined to be unsentimental and discard indifferently all those souvenirs of my happy childhood and foolish adolescence.

Jo sat on the lobby table, swinging her legs and I opened the cupboard and stared in slight dismay at the seemingly formidable task before me. Well, staring wouldn't get the job done, so I pulled the first object out, causing a slight collapse of the rest, and grinned at it.

"Mother," I said "look what's come to light, my old skates and there's still some blood on the one from the time I tripped over a stone and shot head-first into old Mrs Warren's fence and tore my leg on a rusty nail. There, you see Jo? I was so annoyed I allowed the blood to run down over my shoes and the skate while I stood and gazed at it swearingly - 'though silently as Mrs Warren had Rev Williams enjoying the beauty of her petunias or something just the other side of the fence.

"Good heavens! What's that!" I exclaimed as the rubber snake hurled itself out of the cupboard to Jo's feet, or at least onto the floor beneath them.

Jo screamed and Mother and Nora dashed to the interleading doorway the door of which, for convenience sake, had long since been removed from its frame and had, if I remember correctly, been used for firewood in the days when we had had a coal range instead of an electric one in the kitchen. It used to get horribly hot in Summer 'though in winter it was wonderful.

We all gazed at the snake in utter amazement and then it gave another wriggle.

Jo screamed once again and climbed right onto the table. Mother reached it and grabbled the big frying pan from its hook and I turned and grabbed my old and very worn cricket bat from the cupboard, thus causing another subsidence, while Nora clasped her hands, rolling her eyes and moaned to God to have mercy on us poor sinners.

Then of course I laughed and said "What nonsense, that's a rubber snake. Old Jack-in-the-box must have shot it out and there's probably a very natural explanation for that last wriggle - perhaps its been bent skew and the rubber just moved back to normal."

Jo sighed and relaxed, Mother lowered the pan, as I did the bat, and Nora turned shakily back to her lunch preparations.

Jo laughed, 'though she stayed up on the table, and said "Well, what's the next surprise you have for us?"

I turned to the cupboard and stood staring. The dark glasses lifted slowly and deliberately off Teddy's nose, floated gently through the air making a half-turn and then, while I stood transfixed, fastened themselves on my nose and hooked behind my ears. The feeling of it was familiar and I frowned, remembering of course, that those glasses were hooked on exactly the way they or any others had been hooked on by my real right hand when my left hand was too busy, as it usually was.

Haunting me - that's what it was - I was being haunted by my own right hand!

I returned to Jo and saw that she was as white as a sheet, staring at me with a mixed expression of stark terror and horror, then I pulled myself together and laughing said "My dear, don't be frightened, it's just that I have the use of my real right hand again. As you know, it is said that hands have an intelligence of their own or musicians, sculptors and artists could never do the things that they do."

Jo shook her head, tears coming into her dear eyes and said in a very trembling voice "I don't like it. It must be some conjuring trick of yours, but I'm scared. I'm going home."

She looked down in horror at the snake and seemed unable to move. I thought quickly.

Something must be done. It was my hand, therefore it must obey me I thought fiercely.

"Move back into the cupboard at once! Do it!" The snake promptly slithered across the floor in a very life-like manner - I had been clever at it I remember - and into the cupboard.

Mother stepped back in alarm and Jo, being given hidden strength, positively leapt off the table and dashed down the passage, thumped down the stairs, three at a time it sounded like, and then the front door banged.

I turned helplessly to Mother (Nora had vanished into the pantry, closed the door on herself and was saying all the prayers she could think of) and suddenly Mother and I burst out laughing and my ghost hand, insulted, started hurling everything out of the cupboard.

Out they came - Hornby train, teddy bear, stamp album, tops, a bag of marbles - which hit me on the shin. Everything. Mother and I were too overcome to do anything save laugh even louder.

The dark glasses were snatched off my nose and crashed onto the floor in a most positive fury.

There was only one thing to be done. I phoned the undertaker and told him to disinter the small box containing the hand and have it cremated as soon as possible.

The hand raved, jerked out my tie, pulled my hair, tried to ruin my artificial hand and, finding that beyond it's strength, vanished, metaphorically speaking.

The next day the remains of my poor hand were cremated and two weeks later we left for England, even Jo, as my new wife.

I pushed everything back into the cupboard, even the lensless glasses, put a stout padlock on it and told the Mulders (who were renting the house) to pretend it did not exist.

And so it stands today, 'though we are back from our trip and Jo and I are expecting our baby shortly. If it's a boy, I am determined that he shall have the key to the cupboard as soon as he is old enough to unlock the padlock.

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